Cass County, Indiana - Chapter 5: Archaeology, 1913

We find a gradual evolution or development of all things woridly. Scientists have found suflBcient evidence to believe that the earth was once a molten mass which has gradually cooled down forming a crust surrounding a still molten mass within. The -contracting of this crust and the pent-up forces within has formed our mountains and valleys. As the forces of nature, which is God working, according to His immutable and fixed laws, developed the earth's surface, the lowest forms of plant and animal life appeared. As each succeeding geologic age prepared the earth's surface for other and higher forms of life, they made their appearance, until man, who stands at the head of all animate creation, finally came on the scene, and was given authority and power to control and bring under his rule the entire earth and -all things therein, subject, however, to definite and fixed laws, made by a higher and all powerful law giver, whom some would call nature, but we call God.

As to the time man first made his appearance on earth cannot definitely be settled. The human remains of the river drift and cave dwellers of Europe show beyond a doubt that many many thousands of years have elapsed since man first trod the earth. Man is no exception to this general rule of development from a lower to a higher state, as all evidences show that primeval man existed in a very low condition of savagery. It seems to us eminently fitting that God should place man here, granting to him a capacity for improvement, but bestowing on him no gift of accomplishment, which by exertion and experience he could acquire : for labor is, and ever has been, the price of material good. So we see how necessary it is that a very extended time be given us to account for man 's present advancement. Supposing an angel of light was to come to the aid of our feeble understanding, and unroll before us the pages of the past, a past which, with all our endeavors, we as yet know but Uttle.

Can we doubt that, from such a review, we would arise with higher ideas of man's worth? Our sense of the depths from which he has ascended is equaled only by our appreciation of the future opening before him. Immediately we shall have passed away. Our nations may disappear. But we believe our race has yet but fairly started in its line of progress ; time only is wanted. We can but think that, that view which limits man to an existence extending over but a few thousand years of the past, is a belittling one. Rather let us think of him as existing from a past separated from us by these many thousand years; winning his present position by the exercise of God-given powers and faculties. The fiat of Omnipotent power could have created the world in a perfected form for the use of man, but instead of so doing. Infinite Wisdom allowed slow acting causes, working through infinite years, to develop the globe from a nebulous mass. Man could indeed have been created a civilized being, but instead of this, his starting-point was certainly^ery low. He was granted capacities, by virtue of which he has risen. We are not to say what the end shall be, but we think it yet far in the future.

The general accepted view is that the aborigines of America came from eastern Asia and belong to the Mongolian race. A comparison of the skeleton ; a study of their implements, utensils, and language all point in that direction. When this migration took place and just how, no man .knoweth. It might have been before Behring Strait was cut through and when it was an isthmus connecting the two continents or some of the hardy Japanese mariners might have been carried to Alaskan shores; all we know is that it was thousands of years ago. Professor Whiting finds many proofs of the existence of man in the gravels of the Pliocene age in California. Under the solid basalt of Table Mountains have been found many works of man's hands as well as the celebrated ** Calaveras skull." This skull was taken from a mining shaft at Altaville, Cal., at a depth of one hundred and thirty feet beneath several different strata of lava and gravel. These auriferous gravels, Professor Whiting ascribes to the Tertiary age, and he mentions twenty or more instances of finding human remains or the works of man in these gravels. (See Cambridge Lecture, 1878.) If some of our eminent scientists are not mistaken, man lived on our Pacific coast before the glacial period, and the great ice sheets pulverized the surface of the earth and dispersed life before them, came down from the North.

He roamed along our western rivers before the giant volcanic peaks of the Sierras were uplifted, and his old hunting grounds are to-day buried underneath the great lava flow which desolated ancient California and Oregon. It is generally conceded that man lived in California in the Pliocene age, in the neolithic stage of culture. There is no question but that the climate and geography, the fauna and flora were then greatly different from those of the present. In this case truth is stranger than fiction, where whole continents are elevated or submerged, changing the climate to temperate, torrid or frigid ; when we see the great Pacific archipelago emerge from tfie waves, and in place of the long swell of the ocean, we picture the pleasing scenes of tropic lands, the strange floral growth of a past geological age, the animal forms which have since disappeared, with man already well advanced in culture; when we recall all this and picture forth the surprising changes which then took place, the slowly subsiding land, the encroacWng waters, and the results ant wa^tery waste, with here and there a coral-girth island, the great volcanic uplift on main land, the flaming rivers of molten lava, which come pouring forth out of the bowels of the earth followed by cold, ice and snow; when we consider these and the great lapse of time necessary for their accomplishment, how powerless are mere words to set forth the grandeur and the resistless sweep of nature's laws and to paint the insignificance and trifling nature of man and his works.

This people from eastern Asia, who first set foot on American soil, away back in the dawn of the Post-tertiary age, have overrun the entire American continent. By various environments, geological, geographical and climatic changes, and by tribal contentions and wars they have become changed greatly in habits, customs, language and degrees of civilization but all are supposed to have come from one common stock. The Eskimo according to some American and European scholars is supposed to be one of the oldest races or tribes of men and occupied the ' Jersey coast but were driven north by more powerful tribes. The Toltecs and Aztecs in Mexico and South America displayed a higher state of civilization than any other of the American races prior to the coming of Europeans. Perhaps the ^eatest, grandest and most wonderful ruins of pre-historic man in America are those of Copan, Palenque and Uxmal in Yucatan. They consist of immense buildings, probably palaces, temples and otlier public structures made of elaborately cut stone, with statues representing man, animals and strange figures supposed to be idols. These ruins were first minutely explored and described by Mr. Stephens in 1839. He found these ruins in the midst of a tropical forest with giant trees growing in and around the buildings that had probably been destroyed by an earthquake at some time in the mystic past, but who carved and erected these great, beautifully designed palaces, or at what time, is only known to the All- Wise Ruler of the universe. But a people capable of erecting such grand and beautiful palaces of cut stone certainly possessed a high degree of culture and civilization. The remarkable ruins found in the midst of a dense tropical forest, in architectural design, comparing with the great and historical ruins of Babylon and Egypt are certainly most interesting to the archaeologist.

As the naturalist, by the inspection of a single bone, may determine the character and habitat of an anilnal, so the archaeologist by the aid of fragmentary remains, is able to tell us the manners and customs of a people 01* race long since removed.

The scientist today passes up and down the valleys and among the relics and bones of a vanished people and as he touches them with the magic wand of scientific induction, these ancient men, so to speak, stand upon their feet, revivified, rehabilitated and proclaim with solemn voice the story of their hidden tribe or race, the contemporaneous animals and physical appearance of the earth during these prehistoric ages.

The mound builders are known by reason of the remains Ij^ey left, these are principally mounds - hence we call them mound builders. They occupied the valley of the Mississippi with its tributaries and thousands of mounds are found scattered from the lakes to the gulf. These mounds are all sizes, from 20 to 500 feet in diameter and from a few feet to 150 feet in height, and different shapes, are classified according to the supposed purpose for which they were used, into, sepulchral or burial mounds, temple mounds, sacrificial mounds, observation, habitation and effigy mounds. Some of the largest mounds and fortifications have been found near Marietta, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri, but they are found all over Indiana, more especially in the southern part of the state. Dearborn county contains large mounds and fortifications on the banks of the Ohio river; extensive mounds have also been explored in Vanderburg, Knox, Franklin, Clark and other counties. In some mounds ashes and charred remains of animals and human bones have been found ; in others, the graves containing human skeletons sometimes encased in stone sarcophagi with various utensils and implements of war and domestic use. Mortars usually made of boulders cut into a bowl shape for grinding com, seeds, etc., for food. Pestles, made of hard granite rock for grinding food products in the mortars. Stone axes of various shapes and sizes, scrapers, peelers or fieshers. Arrow and spear heads of all sizes and shapes ; drills made of hard stone and pointed to drill holes in stones, etc. ; knives made of flint are quite common in this state; saws are long flint instruments with serrated edges; pipes were made of diflferent kinds of stone and many were artistically carved; hoes and spades. These are broad and thin and well executed implements usually made of flint. Awls, gorgets and ornaments of various kinds and sizes made of different colored stone.

Pottery - The material used in the manufacture of pottery was a variety of clay mixed with powdered shells and thus formed a kind of cement of great tenacity and capable of resisting the actions of fire to a great degree. The specimens of pottery found in the mounds throughout Indiana are rude when compared to the work of civilized people but are remarkably well executed when we consider the conditions of the Indians and their remote ancestors. These articles consist mainly of what appear to have been cookiijg pots, water vessels, cups, vases, etc.

The character of the works of the mound builders indicate that they had permanent places of abode, and were not subject to the vicissitudes of a hunter's life. A study of their institutions has done much in revealing the construction of ancient society and thereby throwing light on some of the mysterious chapters of man's existence. No clearly defined mounds or earth works indicating the residence of mound builders or a prehistoric race have been discovered or excavated within the bounds of Cass county, although Isiah W. Kreider reports that maoy years ago he discovered' two mounds on^his father's farm in the northeast quarter of section 36 in Bethlehem township, about seventy rods east of range line between Adams and Bethlehem townships and sixty rods north of the south line of said quarter section. The north mound was fifty feet in diameter and ten feet in height. When plowing around and over this mound the horses broke through the covering and sank up to their bellies, so Mr. Kreider reports. These mounds have never been fully excavated to discover their exact character or what they may contain. Many flint and stone arrow and spear heads, stone hatchets and axes, chisels, ornaments and other implements of the stone age have been togmd on the surface of the ground, dug up in excavation or found in small recesses or caves in different parts of the county.

These implements are made of ^tone not found in this region and indicate that the Indians or mound builders brought them from the Cumberland and Allegheny mountains and the Lake Superior region.